2.5 Searching Through Messages

You can search a folder for messages to or from a particular person or
about a particular subject. In fact, you can also search for messages
containing selected strings in any arbitrary header field or any string
found within the messages. Use the M-s (mh-search-folder)
command. You are first prompted for the name of the folder to search
and then placed in the following buffer in MH-Pick mode:

Edit this template by entering your search criteria in an appropriate
header field that is already there, or create a new field yourself. If
the string you're looking for could be anywhere in a message, then place
the string underneath the row of dashes. The M-s command uses the
MH command pick to do the real work, so read pick(1) to
find out more about how to enter the criteria.

There are no semantics associated with the search criteria--they are
simply treated as strings. Case is ignored when all lowercase is used,
and regular expressions (a la ed) are available. It is all right
to specify several search criteria. What happens then is that a logical
and of the various fields is performed. If you prefer a logical
or operation, run M-s multiple times.

As an example, let's say that we want to find messages from Ginnean
about horseback riding in the Kosciusko National Park (Australia) during
January, 1994. Normally we would start with a broad search and narrow
it down if necessary to produce a manageable amount of data, but we'll
cut to the chase and create a fairly restrictive set of criteria as
follows:

As with MH-Letter mode, MH-Pick provides commands like
C-c C-f C-t to help you fill in the blanks.

C-c C-f C-t

Move to `To:' header field (mh-to-field).

C-c C-f C-c

Move to `cc:' header field (mh-to-field).

C-c C-f C-s

Move to `Subject:' header field (mh-to-field).

C-c C-f C-f

Move to `From:' header field (mh-to-field).

C-c C-f C-b

Move to `Bcc:' header field (mh-to-field).

C-c C-f C-f

Move to `Fcc:' header field (mh-to-field).

C-c C-f C-d

Move to `Dcc:' header field (mh-to-field).

C-c C-c

Execute the search (mh-do-pick-search).

To perform the search, type C-c C-c (mh-do-pick-search).
The selected messages are placed in the search sequence, which you
can use later in forwarding (see section 2.2.2 Forwarding Mail), printing
(see section 2.4.4 Printing Your Mail), or narrowing your field of view (see section 2.6 Using Sequences).
Subsequent searches are appended to the search sequence. If,
however, you wish to start with a clean slate, first delete the
search sequence (how to do this is discussed in 2.6 Using Sequences).

If you're searching in a folder that is already displayed in a
MH-Folder buffer, only those messages contained in the buffer are
used for the search. Therefore, if you want to search in all messages,
first kill the folder's buffer with C-x k or scan the entire
folder with M-r.